Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] All right, tonight we're going to be in Psalm 37, Psalm 37.
[00:00:16] We'll read the first 11 verses.
[00:00:21] This Psalm covers a number of subjects repeatedly. I don't know if you make when you read your Bible and things, if you make notes. And I would strongly encourage you to get yourself, if you're into computers or phones or whatever, if that's your way, or if you're a paper person and you like to write things down by hand, that's fine too. But get yourself a notebook, get yourself a notes app, and take some notes for yourself. Make yourself a little commentary as you read, as the Lord teaches you, and it'll help you to recall and remember the things that he teaches you.
[00:00:55] That's kind of what I did in this psalm as I was reading it. Psalm 37 covers a number of topics repeatedly, repeatedly, such as fretting and the wicked, which we'll talk a little bit about. The wicked being soon cut off.
[00:01:11] The trust in the Lord doing good is mentioned a couple of times in the Psalms. In this psalm, rather, inheriting the earth for the righteous is mentioned several times. Delighting in the Lord is mentioned several times, Waiting on the Lord, and also the prosperity of the wicked. And you'll see some of these things, but these are things where the Lord's repeating himself and kind of circling them back around and coming at the subject again and again and again.
[00:01:40] And we won't cover all of these tonight. We'll just look at the first 11 verses. But some of these subjects you'll see in these 11 verses a Psalm of David, verse number one. Fret not thyself because of evildoers. Neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
[00:02:07] Trust in the Lord and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
[00:02:14] Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
[00:02:20] Commit thy way unto the Lord trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.
[00:02:26] And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.
[00:02:33] Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him. Fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.
[00:02:46] Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. You notice the word fret continues to show up over and over for evildoers shall be cut off.
[00:02:59] Notice that now, just as a note, as we pass by this, we're not going to spend a lot of time here. Why is it that when we read verse number, verse number one and two, about the wicked, the workers of iniquity being cut down as the grass, and verse number nine, evildoers shall be cut off. Why is it that we always see others in that verse?
[00:03:21] Why is it, and I'm not talking about Christian, non Christian, I'm just talking about when we come at the Bible as a human being, we read verses like that and we think it's always talking about somebody else, right?
[00:03:34] It does make it easy. But here's the thing.
[00:03:37] And this is just a, as they say, this is a true fact, a true fact, which is if a person is reading the Bible and it mentions the workers of iniquity and it mentions the wicked and it mentions the evildoers like these verses mention, and I'm living, I'm doing the evil, right?
[00:03:58] That is my life.
[00:04:00] I live like that.
[00:04:02] How could I not see myself in that verse? In fact, I think the Lord wants us to see ourselves in that verse because if we are fitting the bill, if we are doing the thing that characterizes this person, then it could very well be that we are this person, right? So we would do, we would do well not to see other people in this verse and assume that we're somewhere around verse number three instead of verse number two, right?
[00:04:35] But. But the Lord wants us, the Lord wants it, wants us to look at it honestly. Look at the scripture honestly.
[00:04:42] Notice what it says in verse number, verse number nine. For evildoers shall be cut off, but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth for yet a little while. And the wicked shall not be. Yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place. And it shall not be.
[00:04:58] But the meek shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Let's pray together.
[00:05:07] Thank you Lord, once again for the chance to come to your word, to come and fellowship with your people, especially around your word. Lord, speak to us.
[00:05:17] Lord, we know the Word has been written, has been preserved for us so that we can trust what you have spoken. But Lord, we pray that you would use it by your spirit to talk to each one of us on an individual level according to what we as individuals need.
[00:05:33] And Lord, I pray that you would strengthen and help your people, Lord, as we pay attention to and focus on the truth.
[00:05:40] And Lord, that you would be our teacher. In Jesus name we ask Amen.
[00:05:46] So notice in verse number one, the Bible says, fret not thyself because of evildoers. This is what verse. This is what verse 1 through 11 is really talking about. Now, when we talk about fretting, we often think of worry, right? We think of someone's fretting over something. But what's interesting about the word fret is, of course, you can have it in the more common way we use it, like being in distress in some way. But it's instructive when we look at what the word means in itself, normal physical sense. And this is a little unusual. But the word fret means to gnaw like a dog a bone. To gnaw and just like a dog. If you have a dog, we have a dog, and we'll get our dog a bone. And you know, at the beginning, the dog's just gnawing away, gnawing away, gnawing away. You come back a week later even, what do you find?
[00:06:36] You find that the bone's gone, why it's been gnawed away.
[00:06:41] And that's kind of this.
[00:06:43] That describes this word here, which is the slow kind of wearing away, the slow and gradual destructive action that comes as a result of one of God's people looking at one of you might say the world's people, one of the workers of iniquity.
[00:07:07] And so that because we live in this world, I know sometimes we have a tendency to. We want to create a Christian bubble, right? So we won't hear any cursing, and I don't like to hear cursing. We won't see anything we shouldn't see. And I don't want to see anything that we shouldn't see. But we want to create a bubble around us.
[00:07:27] But really, the description of the New Testament Christian is someone who is among.
[00:07:35] Among the world, right? Who is. Who is touching them, who is seeing them. And you know, that comes with good and bad. We have opportunities to speak to them about the Lord Jesus, but also there comes with that some of the muck, too.
[00:07:48] And one of those. One of the mucky parts of that experience is that you see their lives, which is what is being described here. David is describing his observation of the workers of iniquity and the effect on him of seeing them day after day after day after day. It's gnawing at him.
[00:08:10] It's slowly.
[00:08:12] It's slowly producing a gradual destructive action on him spiritually.
[00:08:20] It's causing him distress, and it's causing him. And we'll see in a minute, temptation because he's seeing Them. Now, the response to that is not, well, then let's create a Christian bubble. That's not the right response to that, is not that. The proper response is verse one, fret not thyself because of evildoers.
[00:08:40] Don't let it gnaw at you.
[00:08:44] Get a biblical. Get an eternal. Get a true perspective on it. Now, what is this.
[00:08:51] What is this kind of gnawing and destructive, gradual destructive action that we see in verse one? Fret not thyself because of evildoers.
[00:08:59] Neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
[00:09:07] Look at verse number seven. He says, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.
[00:09:25] So here's what we're seeing. One of God's people is living among everyone else, just like we all do, living one, the world at large.
[00:09:33] And we see these people who do not fear God, who do not love God, who do not honor God, who do not obey God.
[00:09:45] They don't care about God's standards, they don't care about God's law.
[00:09:51] They don't care about the things of God at all. In fact, many of them are, we hear, we see, are throwing themselves at sin. And yet we have been told kind of, if not directly, it's been kind of implied, that when people do bad things, bad things are going to happen to them, right? Because God's not for them. God's not for people doing evil things. And so we've come to expect that. But that's not our experience and observation. What do we see? We see the workers of iniquity doing what the workers of iniquity do.
[00:10:28] And they're happy and they're prosperous and they got money, right? Their life is successful.
[00:10:38] They've got a bigger house than you do.
[00:10:40] They've got a nicer car than you do.
[00:10:43] Their family seems to be in order.
[00:10:46] You know, you look at their life and everything. They have all their ducks in a row and they have what appears to be success.
[00:10:54] And that with all of that, with the fact that we know that they don't know God and they don't love God and they don't want God, and God's not in any of their thoughts at all. In fact, they're workers of iniquity. We know this. And so we see this conflict.
[00:11:11] And verse one, says, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
[00:11:18] Could a godly person envy someone who is a Worker of iniquity when we observe their seemingly happy life, and I say seemingly, not to cast doubt. I think a lot of those people, they live in sin and they love sin and they don't love God or think of God at all. And I think they're happy.
[00:11:35] I don't doubt the sincerity.
[00:11:37] We could describe it and we could characterize it as, yeah, yeah, they seem happy, but deep down they have a long. I want to tell you something. Have any of you lived without God?
[00:11:46] You know? Right, right. Those of you that maybe got saved as an adult or you know, later on in life or something like that, did you live every moment of your life miserable, you know, with that longing, God sized God shaped hole in our heart? You know, some of the things we use to describe it. No, it was fun. Right. Now that doesn't mean there weren't moments that the Lord would ring our bell and put the fear of God in us. But sometimes we Christian people kind of describe it like that. But what is the psalmist saying? He's seeing people who are living in sin and loving it and prospering.
[00:12:23] And there is a real temptation for the child of God to observe that prosperity of those who do not know God or fear God or love God who give themselves over to what God says is evil.
[00:12:40] There's a real temptation for us to observe them and have the thought like this, look at these guys.
[00:12:50] I mean, they don't follow God and yet everything's going good with them.
[00:12:57] There's a real temptation. And this is not the only time that this kind of temptation is described in Scripture at all.
[00:13:04] Described in Job 21, in Psalm 73, in Proverbs 3, 31, Proverbs 23:17, 24:1, 24:19 over. And that's not all Jeremiah's got one. There's all kinds of references where God's talking to the godly now and he's saying, don't be envious of the workers of iniquity because it can be a serious problem.
[00:13:34] See, our temptation is that when we see them and we see the prosperity of their life, we look at them and we think, like I said, we think, well, everything seems to be going well with them. I mean, look at their retirement account.
[00:13:51] I mean, they don't seem to be lacking for anything. They're in good health.
[00:13:57] I mean, things are good.
[00:13:59] I mean, their family, I mean, I mean all the bad things we've heard about sin, I don't see that.
[00:14:08] And I'll tell you something, I think that the devil, because we Know that there are many examples of sin wrecking people where we would not be interested in following that pattern because we see the end of it right in front of our eyes. Right?
[00:14:27] We have examples of that as well.
[00:14:29] But I don't think the devil wants every person who has given themselves to his dominion and his power.
[00:14:37] I don't think the devil wants all of them to be wrecked because he needs some of them to have a happy, good life to serve as the tempter for us.
[00:14:49] If everybody that's involved in sin is. If everybody's life was a wreck, there would be nobody that would be like, well, hey, come do what we're doing.
[00:14:59] But no, there's some that he reserves that are having a good life, they're having a good time, things are good.
[00:15:05] Good money, good health, good family, everything's good.
[00:15:10] So he keeps them there to get you to envy them.
[00:15:16] Cause here's what happens.
[00:15:17] We say, well, everything seems to be going okay with them.
[00:15:25] And then because of that, we've been told, now, this is the way the Lord wants you to live. And we're all strict fundamentalists and literalists and all these terrible terms to describe. We believe the Bible literally. And we, you know, we're narrow and, you know, all of those things. And we see that and we think, well, but if I just loosened up on this, if I just loosened up on this, we would slide into their ways in search of that same kind of ease and comfort. Notice what verse eight says, and this describes it exactly. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Fret not thyself in any wise to what to do evil. You see, what they're doing is gnawing at us.
[00:16:18] It's gnawing at us. We're trying to live right and things seem difficult. And we see them and they're not trying to live right at all. They don't love God at all.
[00:16:27] And the fact that they're living in prosperity is gnawing at us, causing us to fret so that we start to slide in search of that kind of ease and comfort that we see in them.
[00:16:42] Because after all, their life, you know, as it appears, is much easier than a narrow kind of way of righteousness where you want to actually please God in everything that you do.
[00:16:53] Again, Satan has those people out there.
[00:16:57] I want to tell you something, though. This kind of temptation that leads us to slide into mimicking that life, loosening up, loosening up our what we know for certain the Lord is not pleased with right. We're not talking about picky Things I'm talking about.
[00:17:19] We see people that are not honest in their business dealings prospering, right? We see people who mistreat their workers prospering. We see people who are committing adultery against their wife prospering, right?
[00:17:32] We see people who are, who are, who are getting hammered every weekend at the clubs.
[00:17:39] Good life, right?
[00:17:43] And we start to let things slip a little bit.
[00:17:47] But the result of giving in or the result of sliding into this temptation is not just. We become sad. You know, listen, temptation and sin is not just about our happiness. This is not what it's about. Ultimately, it's about our God, our fellowship with him. It's not just about how we feel about it. That's Joel Osteen think.
[00:18:10] That's not biblical.
[00:18:12] You see, when we. It's not just about, well, you know, if we do that, we'll be sad. No. There.
[00:18:18] When we slide into this temptation and we yield to this thought process, it has real world, real life influence on our choices, what we choose to do.
[00:18:30] And those choices in turn have real life effects on every part of our life.
[00:18:37] In other words, it sets the direction of our life. We see this guy, he's prospering, and so we start slipping in that direction. And we're all of a sudden doing some of the things he's doing, thinking, you know, does it really matter? He's having a good time. I mean, is God really going to get me? You know, these kind of things we think, is God really going to get me?
[00:18:54] But that choice cascades into other effects that we didn't really calculate.
[00:19:02] You see, when we indulge these ideas and pursue the life of the wicked as one of God's people, we find ourselves getting involved in things that as an example, no godly lady or godly man would give any attention to us while we're involved in that.
[00:19:21] Think about it.
[00:19:22] He's having a good time, things are good, we start slipping. And a godly lady who's looking for a husband is not going to pay any attention to you because you're involved in that.
[00:19:37] And that's a downstream effect of it.
[00:19:39] A godly man is not going to be paying attention to a young lady who's involved in that.
[00:19:44] He's just not.
[00:19:47] We indulge these ideas, we pursue the life of the wicked. We find that our heart is hardened. When the Lord comes, He comes to us and he says, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Our heart is already hardened in sin, chasten, prosperity.
[00:20:03] We indulge these ideas and pursue the Life of the wicked. And we find that our children have observed this pattern in us chasing the wicked, right? The prosperity, thinking it doesn't really matter all that much.
[00:20:16] And our children observe this pattern. And whether they're willing or not, whether they know they're doing or not, they begin to mimic it. And man, you talking about a life of just cascading misery.
[00:20:32] What did it go back to? It all went back to. You saw them having a good time and you thought, I can just loosen up. It doesn't really matter.
[00:20:42] That's where it went back to.
[00:20:45] Look at Genesis 13 real quick.
[00:20:50] Genesis chapter 13.
[00:21:03] Look at verse number 10.
[00:21:11] Of course, at this point, Lot and Abraham are having to divide. Abram at this point are having to divide, go their separate ways. Abram gives Lot the deference of choosing which way he would go. Look how Lot made his decision.
[00:21:30] And Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt as thou comest unto Zohar, it looks prosperous. Listen, if you have animals and you go to a place that's green, you're going to do well, right?
[00:21:53] Plenty of pasture. Your animals are going to multiply. And that is your money.
[00:21:58] That's your cars in the driveway. That's. That's the square footage of your house. That's your money in your bank. That's what that is in, you know, 2100 BC notice. So notice what Lot is paying attention to. He's paying attention to the prosperity. You see it, verse 11. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan and Lot journeyed east and they separated themselves, the one from the other. Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent towards Sodom. But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.
[00:22:35] So what do you have here? You have wicked sinners living in what, prosperity?
[00:22:44] And this you know. You know your Bible. You know that Sodom and Gomorrah in the plain actually serves as one of the most often repeated examples of judgment wrath in the Bible.
[00:22:57] And yet they're having a good time.
[00:23:00] They live in a well watered plain, no doubt wealthy, no doubt well cared for, but they're wicked. And Lot is paying attention to the prosperity and he's not paying attention to the way these men are.
[00:23:18] So Lot makes a decision.
[00:23:21] He sees the prosperity of the wicked. Now Lot is a man who's a believer in the Lord, right? We know that he's a righteous man.
[00:23:30] But seeing the prosperity of the wicked has drawn him in their direction.
[00:23:38] And you know, before you know it, he's going to be a person that's sitting in the gate of Sodom. He's going to be one of them, calling them brethren, you know, from reading Genesis.
[00:23:49] But I want to ask you what I was just talking about. What is the effect of those choices? It's not just he's going to feel bad. What is the effect downstream of his choices here? When he was envy envious at the wicked and saw their prosperity and went after them, what was the effect?
[00:24:07] Lot is going to lose.
[00:24:10] Lot is going to lose his adult married daughters.
[00:24:15] Lot is going to lose his wife.
[00:24:18] Lot is going to lose his daughters that aren't married.
[00:24:24] Lot is going to lose his honor and Lot is going to lose his ancestors.
[00:24:30] Not to mention all of the property that he wanted. He's going to lose it all.
[00:24:37] And it all started how, when he was envious at the prosperity of the workers of iniquity.
[00:24:48] That's where it's ended. This is why the Lord says back in Psalm 37, he says this verse 3 or verse 2. For they the workers of iniquity shall soon be cut down like the grass.
[00:25:04] So God says, don't look at their prosperity at this moment.
[00:25:08] It will not always be this happy.
[00:25:12] The Lord says, I'm going to tell you about these people.
[00:25:17] They will soon be cut off without remedy.
[00:25:20] Do you believe me?
[00:25:25] The difference is going to be faith, trust. Look at what verse three says. Trust in the Lord. Now think about the context. Now don't read that. I know we read the verse three in isolation and that's fine, but read it in the context, the Context of Verse 3. Trust in the Lord and do good. So shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. That's in the context of the prosperity of the wicked. The Lord says, listen, these wicked, they're going to be cut off soon. You need to trust me.
[00:25:55] Believe me when I tell you that their time is short. They are not people that you need to be envious of. This prosperity, you see, is fleeting.
[00:26:05] They are not people you should be gravitating toward.
[00:26:13] You see, this temptation is defeated by the shield of Faith.
[00:26:19] Ephesians, chapter 6.
[00:26:22] Because the Lord calls us to believe.
[00:26:25] Verse number 3. Trust in the Lord that what he says about the end of the wicked, what he says about the end of the wicked and that their joy is but short lived. But also in verse five, he says, commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust there's that faith again also in him, and he shall bring it to pass. In other words, we believe what he says about the short lived joy of the wicked. But we also entrust to God our way and believe that God is a kind guide of our lives. Look at verse 23.
[00:27:01] The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and He delighteth in his way.
[00:27:07] God knows when, God knows how, God knows what to provide for us. And this is the great joy of it all. We can trust God and know that we do not need to be distracted and led away with what seems to be the temporary prosperity of these people, but to look at God and trust him with our lives and the direction of our lives and the way we live it. Our way. Like the scripture says, commit thy way unto the Lord.
[00:27:35] And when we do that, what we find is that God has. The Lord has godly things that correspond to the fleeting prosperity of the wicked. He has godly things that are permanent that correspond to the very things that we were tempted to focus on.
[00:28:02] He has got, you might say, a godly version of those things that he will give us. I'm not just making this up. Look what he says. Verse 3. Trust in the Lord and do good. So shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
[00:28:15] That's prosperity.
[00:28:17] Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of Thine heart.
[00:28:24] That's what drove Lot, right? The desire of his heart, the prosperity of the plain of Sodom. And the Lord says, you delight in Me. I'll give you the desires of your heart.
[00:28:36] You see this God promises to those that trust Him. He promises his care over us. I read it in verse three. He promises delight.
[00:28:50] Verse number four.
[00:28:52] He promises to give us the desires of our heart. Verse number four. He promises in verse number five, Commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass. What is he bringing to pass? You notice the verse doesn't say it, but read it in context. He's talking about the desires of our heart. Those things that we long for, that we commit to him and entrust the timing and the way and all of those things. And God does it not, our chasing this shadow of prosperity of the wicked to get those things. God brings the things into our life that he knows are truly good for us.
[00:29:34] And there's no evil mixed in with it.
[00:29:39] He brings it to pass.
[00:29:42] He promises that he will bring those things to pass when we commit to him those desires, those.
[00:29:48] And he will do so without our having to sacrifice our righteousness before Him. Because he will do all these things righteously. Look at verse six. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light and Thy judgment as the noonday. You see that? So you get all of these great things that were originally the things you were chasing.
[00:30:12] He gives them to you full measure, according to his will, in a godly way, with delight and joy. And you can still maintain your integrity before Him.
[00:30:26] Isn't that a blessing?
[00:30:28] Isn't that a blessing? But there is one caveat.
[00:30:34] There's one caveat which is in verse 7.
[00:30:41] Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Verse 9. Free will doers shall be cut off. But those that wait upon the Lord, the Lord's way will require waiting his way, his time.
[00:30:55] There will be no instant gratification like Lot wanted. I want to tell you something though. You know the story of Lot and Abraham? Abraham walked by faith. That's what we're talking about, right? How to end up with him?
[00:31:07] Lot got that instant gratification.
[00:31:09] Abraham dwelt in the desert, basically.
[00:31:13] But what was the end of Abraham?
[00:31:17] Abraham's end was great.
[00:31:20] He was a great man in the east, well respected. And he retained his relationship to the Lord as well.
[00:31:30] The Bible says the blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich. And he addeth. Some of you know this verse. And he addeth no sorrow with it.
[00:31:41] So let me encourage you to commit your way to the Lord and trust also in Him.
[00:31:47] And he'll make sure you have all those things you need and those things you want and those things that bring you great delight. Let's pray.
